Claire Chandler (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

It is my pleasure to rise and speak on this matter of public importance raised in the Senate today by my friend and colleague Senator Bridget McKenzie. I'm very pleased to be speaking here today about the neglect of critical infrastructure funding as a result of the new government's actions.

We know infrastructure investment is absolutely critical for economic development, productivity and road safety, and that is why the former coalition government placed such a high priority on investing across the country in the infrastructure that we need for the future. Certainly, in my first few years in this place, being in the government, it felt as if almost every week or every month that we were back at home in Tasmania I was going out and talking about a new roads project around the state, whether that was more funding for the Midland Highway upgrades or funding the South East Traffic Solution through to the Southern Beaches and Sorell—very exciting projects and projects that Tasmania needs to ensure that we have the infrastructure, particularly the roads infrastructure, for a growing population, for our transit corridors and for our tourism industry, to support our economy and our population into the future. It was my great pleasure to be advocating for those projects when we were in government.

In contrast, in its first budget last year the Albanese government cut more than $9.6 billion from infrastructure programs across the country, and we know that 36 infrastructure projects have been cancelled entirely and many more have been delayed. Many of the cancelled and delayed projects are dam projects, and there are also huge cuts to road and rail infrastructure programs. I think that's really disappointing, because that is the sort of infrastructure that we need to be investing in in the longer term.

It's no surprise that Labor are cutting infrastructure projects, because, as we've seen today, their political strategy is always to do deals with the Greens. They've decided that their strategy for their time in government is to side with the most anti-development, anti-jobs and anti-infrastructure party in Australia. So it's no surprise to see them reducing spending on infrastructure, and it's no wonder that they've decided that one of the ways they're going to try and plug holes in their budget is to cancel infrastructure projects and delay or reprofile infrastructure spending. This is an attitude that is going put at risk really important projects right across the country. At the very least, it is going to delay the completion of road projects which Australians are relying on to make our highways and our road networks safer and more efficient.

In my own state of Tasmania, we have seen the Labor government drop tens of millions of dollars in project funding out of the budget across a number of projects which the coalition funded and was building, some of which I referred to in the first few minutes of my speech here today. In government, the coalition made record investments in Tasmanian road and rail infrastructure. More than $4.5 million was committed by the previous government, including funding the largest infrastructure projects in Tasmanian history. The last budget we handed down included $639 million for Tasmanian infrastructure projects. In Labor's first budget, in contrast, $66 million of that has disappeared off the books. That includes funding for projects like the Tasmanian Roads Package, the Hobart to Sorell Corridor, the Freight Capacity Upgrade Program and the Tasman Bridge upgrades. These are incredibly important projects. They are projects that I was certainly very proud to be fighting for in government, and I'm incredibly disappointed to see the funding slipping away under this new government.

There is no doubt that when we get another budget in just a few months, in May this year, we are going to see the same tactic repeated. If they want to save a few million dollars to plug a hole in the budget, they'll cut projects and push funding from one year out to the next to get it off the books, and of course, when they have finished cutting infrastructure programs to save some dollars, they will come for Australian workers and slug them with more taxes.

This is a government which would prefer to be doing deals with the Greens rather than building infrastructure. Today's dirty deal between Labor and the Greens isn't the first deal they've done which is terrible news for investment in Australia, and I certainly don't think it's going to be the last. We are going to see this again and again and again—Labor and the Greens in a back room, stitching up a deal to attack job-creating investments. What we saw today was the Labor government's agenda being announced in a Greens press conference, and nothing could sum up this government better than that. (Time expired)